ALICE B. NEAL.
The banks of the Hudson seem destined to become classic ground. Not a few of our most distinguished writers, men and women, have either lent their genius to the celebration of its beauties, or have themselves drawn inspiration from its mountain breezes. The name of Alice B. Neal is now to be added to the list. Born in 1828, in the city of Hudson, she may have owed her early love for the beautiful to the romantic scenery by which her childhood was surrounded. If there be any truth in the theory of physical influences upon the mental, we may in like manner trace something of the enduring energy with which she has met her many trials to her subsequent dwelling upon the hardier soil of the granite State. Her education was finished in New Hampshire, where she gave early indications of intellectual superiority.
An apparently trivial incident of the school-room led to a most romantic issue, and fixed indeed her course in life. In a sportive hour, her schoolmates challenged her to try her success before the world with some of those compositions which had so excited the admiration of the school. The challenge was accepted, and a tale was at once despatched to Joseph C. Neal, who had then just established the “Saturday Gazette.” It was entitled “The First Declaration,” and signed “Alice G. Lee.”
Mr. Neal was then in the prime of his days, and one of the acknowledged arbiters of taste in literature. His decision as to the rejection or the acceptance of the story was watched with eager eyes by the merry young coterie. How those eyes must have sparkled to find in a subsequent Gazette, not only the tale published in full, but the following editorial comments:
“Taking it for granted that our literary department for the week will receive an attentive perusal, we shall be mistaken—much mistaken, ladies—for to your peculiar appreciation of the beautiful and refined we appeal, particularly in the present instance—if the reader does not agree with us
(321)
